A Manuscript's Journey - Part II

In case you missed the first part, this is where I tell the story of completing my first book...

GET A LIFE

6-inch platforms, books, chair...still, I could barely reach the ceiling.

My freshman year in university, my roommate, Jennifer and I had a whiteboard on the front of our door. When it wasn't covered in acidic orange Halloween cobwebs, people often left messages there. We wrote down some of the things we'd be doing that day, as well as giving updates on some of our projects.

Jennifer was an interior architecture major, and usually noted when she'd be in the studio (which was usually). I was usually in the coffeeshop, but kept a running word-count for my book. Occasionally, people would comment on the word-count, though usually it was just how I kept myself honest with progress.

Then one day, after a particularly productive weekend, someone wrote "Get a life!" on the board, with an arrow pointing to my word-count.

I didn't take it seriously, of course, but "getting a life" did halt me in my writing progress somewhat, and probably in a good way. I was making new friends, getting involved in different activities, riding my bike to the park on campus, and spending more time talking at the coffeeshop than writing. The girls across the hall and I had costume tea parties in the middle of the hall. I got second-place in Dormitory Survivor. I completed my Undergraduate Honors.

It was a great time for me, socially, but my relative progress on word-count suffered.

 I wrote a lot that year, but it wasn't always on The Mark of Flight. I wrote a lot for school (both fiction and schoolwork), was heavily involved in an online RP forum, and wrote quite a bit of fanfiction. It wasn't until the following summer that I actually made real progress.

THE PRINCESS IN THE TOWER

Rural, but comfy!

The Summer between my freshman and sophomore years was miserable. My parents had moved from the city where I'd spent most of my life to the rural county about an hour and a half east, where we had a family farm. I'd never lived there, but my parents had spent the previous three years renovating a tobacco barn into a livable (and quite comfortable) home, so it was obviously where I would be spending my summer.

I knew no one.

It felt a lot like I was the princess in the tower, stuck without a way to get back to everything that was familiar. Occasionally, my knight in shining armor (read: Adryn) would come rescue me from isolation, but not quite often enough to keep me sane. Also, my trusty Gateway desktop was dying a slow and terrible death, and I wanted something more portable, so that I could take it with me to the coffeeshop. I managed to get a job as a server at a local sports bar, where I wore cheerleading shorts and wasn't allowed to write anything down. I was 19, which meant I also didn't know the first thing about alcohol.

Imagine my surprise the first time some guy asked me for a blow job in front of his date. Pro tip: it's a type of shot.

So, because of my bad memory and relative lack of expertise, I was relegated to the afternoon shifts. This meant I made crappy tips...but I had a lot of time to write. At first I wrote on napkins. I have about three chapters (original chapters 9, 10, and 11) all written out on napkins, receipts, and tiny note-pads.

Photographic evidence!

By the time the summer was over, I had a new laptop, 75,000-ish words, and a healing cut near my ear from where a drunken Good Ol' Boy chucked his shot-glass into my full bus bin from about 10 feet away.

Awesome aim, to be sure. Awesome judgement? Not so much. It shattered a martini glass, which flew up and cut my face. Small town - no one got in trouble.

THE WORD-COUNT WAGER

Sophomore year went much the same as my freshman year, except I didn't manage to take the writing workshop classes. After a disastrous attempt to double major in music and English, I had a lot of credits to make up for. My GPA was limping off the honor-roll, which irritated the crap out of me. Also, I had to take a math class (just shoot me).

Some time the previous year, I had bowed to the undeniable fact that the single-book-of-epic-proportions I had at first envisioned was going to need splitting up. I'd immediately decided on a duology, but after a few more months, I was slowly beginning to understand my own ratio of plot-point to word-count. Two books wasn't going to be enough; I was going to have to write a trilogy.

Luckily, there were natural breaks in the story arc for three books...and one of them wasn't too far off. Maybe it was suddenly, maybe it was totally by accident, and maybe it didn't really count in my head...but I was really close to finishing a book.

That's when Skrybbi made me a deal: if I could finish the first book of what I was now calling The Markmasters Trilogy by the end of the summer, she'd buy me Indian food. If I couldn't, I'd treat her.

So I drove myself toward the end of my book. For the first time, I didn't let myself look back, I didn't let myself edit. I didn't let myself post the chapters onto the online forum and then sit there, not writing another word until I got a response. I wrote like a madwoman, and by the end of summer, I wrote the last line:

"The last thing Shiro saw when he glanced over his shoulder was the painting of the Apprentice, whose green eyes followed him until the great maw snapped shut, closing him into darkness."

Then I got my Indian food.

Why I Can't Finish Good Books



 Okay, so the title is a little misleading--I can finish good books (and usually do), but I have this odd tendency to get a few chapters into a fantastically written book and dive for my computer. Rather than respond to a bit of gorgeous detail or cleverly-wrought exposition with "OMG, I must read more!" I respond by diving for my computer, sending anything in my way flying: coffee-tables, chairs, vacuum cleaners, stuffed monkeys, my roommate...
The cats, sensing imminent peril, are usually good at getting out of the way.

I've had a friend describe this as "Like trying to stop peeing mid-stream!" He simply can't put a book down when it's that good.

Does anyone else do this? It can't just be me. I imagine a seamstress walking by shop windows and seeing a gorgeous dress with lots of pin-tucks. Rather than purchasing the dress, the seamstress rushes home to make something with pin-tucks in it. Then, proud of her achievement, she says: "LOOK at my pin-tucks! LOOK AT THEM."

Now, I'm not saying I go and write something that's exactly like what I've just read, but that competative side of me comes out and I have to get to work immediately. I have to keep writing, keep improving, so someday maybe I can be that good.

The main reason I'm writing this is because I've been having a hard time getting through Sabriel, by Garth Nix. I'm loving it, and that's partly why. I consistently get about a half a chapter (sometimes only a few pages) before I have to put it down and write something. His ability to translate seemingly-insignificant detail into something that not only enriches the reader's sense of Sabriel's world, abilities, or fears but also usually furthers the plot just astounds me. I adore detail, but I often don't have a reason for putting it in beyond "that's how I see it in my head".

At the moment, I'm also working on Finnikin of the Rock, Graceling, Dragonflight, and Red Seas under Red Sky. Dragonflight is one I'm re-reading to observe worldbuilding techniques (Anne McCaffrey is a master of this) and Red Seas Under Red Sky is the sequel to one of my favorite books of all time. I'm waiting till I have an uninterruptable weekend to read it, though. Finnikin of the Rock and Graceling were both recommended to me because the genre and character ages are similar to The Mark of Flight.

Chatterbox: Do you ever get inspired to write because of a good book? Can you stop reading a good book for any reason? Can you stop peeing mid-stream? What are you reading now, and why?

Idleness Drives Me Nuts

Last week I wrote a post in which  I discussed the sacrifices we often make in order to find time to write. If you're like me, you've got a plethora of interests that go on hold so you can get that next scene done, so it should be no surprise that one of the most frustrating things to me is idleness. Wasted time. Time when I'm doing nothing and I could be doing something.

Raven and I went shopping for costume and apartment goods over tax-free weekend, and when we parted ways we said, "Have a productive day!" That earned us a WTH look from the family getting into the car nearby.

Raven and I are a lot alike. We get more satisfaction from producing and creating than from relaxing. At any given moment, we need to be doing something. Boredom is the worst feeling in the world and tends to creat symptoms resulting in the need for Hagen Daaz and hard liquor. So to us, saying "have a productive day" is the equivalent of saying "have a good day" with a little more specificity. We know each other well enough that we can be more specific without it seeming unusual.

I go a long way to avoid EVER coming face-to-face with boredom. My purse is effing hilarious, because I'm one of those people that always has either a purse AND a tote, or a bag large enough to fit a rottweiler. My terror of idleness fused with the ugly face of creative indecision (and a pathological need to buy notebooks) has led to a habit of carrying around far more "stuff" than I need.



This is just what I take to WORK: a novel, notecards, two notebooks, two pens, post-it notes, an eraser (but no pencil), makeup, a wallet, hand cream, my iPhone, a mirror, and a monokuro-boo pouch. Work, y'all. Why do I need this?



As long as I have tools of creativity, I'm never bored. Now, there are times when I simply feel like doing soemting relaxing, but I've almost always got something going on. I listened to The Dead Robots Society and I Should Be Writing as I got my nails done. I use my commutes to catch up on other podcasts, or to read, or to listen to music in a playlist for whatever stories I'm brainstorming. While grocery shopping, doing housework, making costumes, and cooking I usually listen to audiobooks, podcasts, or music if I'm not talking with Skrybbi or Raven.

If there's one thing that irks me more than anything else, it's enforced idleness. Remember being in school and finishing your work before other kids? It always bugged me that I couldn't read whatever book I had in my backpack. Now I have an office job doing data entry, and I totally understand not being allowed to use the internet or cell-phones when there's nothing to type--those things are super-distracting and hard to limit to just down-time. The other day, I brought one of my notebooks to work and was outlining (while refreshing the data feed very often), when my supervisor walked by (because there was nothing to do, so she was wandering) and told me I wasn't allowed to write.

Meanwhile, five of my coworkers were standing outside their cubicles, not checking the feed, chatting about the movies they'd gotten from Red Box. Don't get me wrong--that's a totally legit way to spend down-time, and I do not think any less of folks who prefer chatting--but I'm not that similar to most of my coworkers. I'm younger than everyone by five to ten years and we come from different backgrounds; we have different interests, priorities, lifestyles, and personalities. To be honest, I'm not good at small-talk. It takes a lot out of me and I feel awkward and disingenuous doing it.

In Scott Westerfeld's book "Leviathan", the character of Prince Alek finds himself shocked by how little the conversations of the people at market seem to matter when there's a war about to erupt. To that statement, the Count accompanying him replies with "Most people don't think past their dinner-plates." Alek's feelings resonated with me. The importance of conversations depend on our sphere of knowledge and influence, and unfortunately, mine is totally different from my coworkers'.

I suppose to the outside eye, working on something that isn't work-related appears to take energy away from the job I'm getting paid for. I would agree with that if A) there had been work I was avoiding in favor of the work I wanted to do, and/or B) water-cooler chatting was also considered unproductive. If I'm not talking to my coworkers during down-time, I'm meant to be either reading my manual (which I've entirely hilighted) or staring into oblivion, incessantly clicking the refresh button.

No, I'm not going to say it's unfair, because it IS fair: they're paying me for my time, so they get to say what I do and don't do with it. But to someone like me, it's excruciating. It feels like wasted time. I can think of at least 12 things I could be doing to make efficient use of that slow time.
That said, I feel totally comfortable making use of innocent-looking post-it notes.

Water Cooler: How do you use down-time at work? Does being idle bother you? Why or why not? How do you cram together all your activities? What do you think about workplace rules? Enforced idleness?

Photograph by D Sharon Pruitt

Making Time to Write

Monday night, my roommate Skrybbi was up making piñatas, ten of them--pink and purple fringy things about the size of a six-year-old's head. All last week, our kitchen table was occupied by bowls of flour-water and strips of newspaper; crusty balloons covered in papier-mâché hung drying in our window. My roommate, bless her, is a teen librarian. Well, almost. You see, she's in graduate school right now so she can get paid like a librarian, and while her job title might actually be "librarian's assistant", there is no teen librarian. So it's her.

By now, you've probably gathered that Skrybbi is working full time, going to graduate school, and making piñatas. You might also be thinking she's crazy, but that's a topic for a different post.

What I'm getting at here is this: Skrybbi is busier than I am. I don't have grad school on top of my job. I don't have to spend a lot of my free time researching and making crafts for the teen programs. I spend my free-time writing. But if she wanted to, Skrybbi could do it too.

"I know very well that when I come home every day, I sit down in front of an episode of True Blood and you sit down in front of your computer to write," she told me today. Since we've been rooming together, I've noticed a few things: Skrybbi is super-busy, right? But she watches more TV than me, she goes to bed before me, and wakes up after. How can she be both busier than me, and having more relaxation and sleep-time? The answer: relaxation and sleep are not my priorities.

SACRIFICE

Nothing is more frustrating than telling someone you've just finished a manuscript and then hearing: "I wish I had that kind of free time."

Them's fightin' words, because you know what? If you really want to make time to write, you're going to have to sacrifice something.

STEP AWAY FROM THE SHEEP! (AND PUT SOME PANTS ON!) I'm not talking about daughters, deer, and sacred bovine. I'm talking about activities. Things you do. Fun things, or even things you consider necessary (like spending time with friends).

I give up a lot of things. I give up my weekends, my vacation time, Dr. Who and Torchwood, afternoons on the lake, getting back into rowing. I give up long phone calls with my mom, and going out with friends. I give up my Friday nights, and usually my Saturday nights too.

There is no magic button.

There are dishes in my sink, my laundry hamper is full, and I should probably clean out the cat-box. It's 12:13 AM, I have to get up at 6:30, and I haven't showered yet. If your schedule's anything like mine, you have about four hours in any given day to get stuff done...assuming you sleep eight hours, which I almost never do. I just finished a manuscript so this week is an exception, but usually when I get home from work, I don't sit down in front of the TV or go to the gym. I don't grab the latest George R R Martin book and let it eat my face. I don't call my friends. I don't hop in the shower. I might be slightly guilty of playing Angry Birds and checking my email, but the ONLY thing I'm thinking about is getting my hands on that keyboard.

Sometimes I go grudgingly, and sometimes I putter around the internet instead of writing, but I do write, and usually for much longer than I should. Then I get to choose between a shower and having six hours of sleep rather than five and a half...

Yes. I shower. But then it's this again:

There are days when I would LOVE for things like TV, workouts, showers, and friends to be my priority. It would be awesome to sit down in front of a few episodes of Avatar and not feel guilty because I could be writing.

I don't have a time-turner (okay, I do, but it's fake) and I don't have 28-hour days, but I do have my priorities established.

But I'm Le Tired...

Sometimes I walk in after work and the overwhelming amount of dishes and the daily disaster of the cats chasing each other around the apartment (and Dragon*Con costume-making) takes precedence. By the time I'm done straightening and eating and all that, I don't want to write. All I want is sweatpants, a cup of Earl Gray, and David Tennant, although not necessarily in that order. We all have those days, and that's fine...but if you're feeling that way every day, you might be letting yourself off too easily.

Some people work twelve hours a day, have kids, have spouses, and still manage to eke out time for writing. It can be hard, and when life explodes it can be damn near impossible, but if you want to write, stop waiting for the Writer's Conspiracy to abduct you in the night, hand you the mask and robes, and give you the Inverted Pendulum of +5 Chrono-retardation. (...wait what?)

Why wait for a magical future time when the day has 28 hours and working from 9 - 6 suddenly isn't exhausting? When exactly is that going to happen? I'm hoping to stay busy, because if I'm not busy in this economy, it means I'm unemployed. Been there. Not cool.

Writing will become a habit. You can argue if it's good or healthy or obsessive, but the results are there: I produce work. I get the stories out of my head, and then I try to get them as close to perfect as possible.

So that's it. That's the big secret: you DO have time to write.

Still don't believe me? Tell me why:

Talk to me, gorgeous: Where does writing fall in your list of priorities? Do you have time to write? What have you sacrificed to have that time? Do you have any suggestions to make time?

Pantser or Plotter?

First of all, I'm happy to announce that "The Beggar's Twin" has won the running for which story I pursue in this year's NaNoWriMo. Huzzah! I never did get around to posting the third contender, but the overwhelming support for BT both here and on Facebook (and IRL from Raven and Skryb) makes me think it's this story's time. The energy's there, so I might as well use it.

I've had other good news recently, which has given me an extra burst of energy. No, I'm not telling what it is. Bwahaha. :)

Anyway, I've been working on the plotting and worldbuilding aspects of BT this week, so I thought I'd talk today apropos my methods. (Dude, doesn't that word make me look, like, so totally smart?)

Plotter with Pants!

Most people reading this blog are probably familiar with the Pantser vs. Plotter deliniations, but for those who are less familiar, it's the writer who flies bet he seat of her pants vs. the writer who outlines. I've always been a plotter--I'm simply too long-winded and disorganized not to be. I wasn't, however, always a very good plotter. My outlines used to look like this:

• Plot Point A
• Fun scene idea with no purpose
• "another scene here"
• Plot Point F
• ...more stuff happens here that I don't know yet
• THIS AWESOME SCENE
• Plot Point Q(ish)

A plan? Certainly. A plot? Enghgghh... I sort of pants-plotted. If that's even a thing. Let's say it's a thing. Anyway, there was no real thought about what scenes I might need, no sense of story structure, and no good way to spot connections or gaps. I planned a story arc with A-F-Q(ish), but then I let my pants take over and do the typing. I do not apologize for that mental image, by the way.

I have no doubt that method works for some people, but it didn't help me get over my biggest weakness: making it all MATTER.

What Fianlly Worked

I'm an INTP, for which the type-name is called "The Architect". I also have Attention Deficit. I want you all to imagine walking into a building made by an ADD Architect who decided not to use a blueprint. I think we can all agree that it's best if I don't pants it.

I stumbled upon Holly Lisle's Notecarding method last year before NaNoWriMo. I know I tout this method all the time on my blog, but that's because it really worked for me. It really helps me look at the ideas I've got and see the gaps and weaknesses, see how it all connects, and tease out subplots and new possibilities.

So Beggar's Twin was a little deceptive in that the summary told you what the story is about without telling you the plot. I didn't even mention a bad guy. Yeah. That's cause I didn't have one. I knew what the main conflict of the story was (girl vs. society), and I knew a lot about the world because I'd written a short-story about it in college. I had characters and an eventual goal...but I didn't know what happened to get them there.

I get distracted by my own thoughts while I'm in my head. I have to plot physically with notecards. Raven often says she thinks about her stories while she drives. I can't do that very well, but over the past few years I've come up with a solution: freewriting.

I did The Artist's Way a few years ago, and one of the best things about it were Morning Pages (three pages of stream-of-consciousness journaling as soon as you wake up). Now, I didn't like doing them, because it meant I had to get up early, and my disposition in the morning is an ugly cross between a wet cat and Gollum with a caffeine addiction.

Rather than complaining about family, work, or friend problems, I always found myself writing about plot problems and ideas. Most of the time, an answer would crystallize right there on the page. So rather than thinking about my plotting woes in my head, where the "I should take a nap--ooh, a chocolate chip cookie!" part of my brain is strongest, I think best on paper.

Putting It Together

Now that I'm writing BT, I've run into problems everywhere. I notecarded the scenes I knew I wanted to happen, but I had a lot of gaps. So I turned to the pages. Here are some examples from my notebook:

• What should (POV Character) be doing for the first half of the story?
• I have to decide how (event) is going to play out...and tie it in with (character) somehow...
• I don't have a villain. :(
• How should the calendar work?

I've answered all of them just by pouring out my frustrations, ideas, and concerns onto the page without censoring myself. As I came up with ideas, I made notecards and looked for more inconsistencies and gaps. The story has gone from a very unformed mass of characterization and world-building to having roughly 3/5 of my scenes figured out.

ON PANTSING

I don't have any issue with pantsing; I just find it doesn't work as well for me. However, I don't consider my outlines to be rigid. It's not like the notecards have a permanent sticking charm on them like the portrait of Mrs. Black.

And if you didn't get that reference...

INTERACT: Are you a pantser or a plotter? How do you resolve plot issues? Have you done Morning Pages? Did they help? What's your method for creating plot?

Procrastination

Procrastination just seems so much more efficient when you have a British accent.

Charlie brings up a good point when he said creating videos for YouTube used to be what he did to avoid his real job, but now that making YouTube videos is his job, making videos has become the thing he avoids rather than the method of avoidance. That's generally true for me when I'm faced with "having to do" something, even if it's something I usually like doing. I love reading, but it was hard to make myself do assigned reading. While I was unemployed, I decided to try writing as if I were a full-time writer, but had neither the pressure of a time-constraint nor the accountability to help facilitate the process. I was suddenly faced with a seemingly-interminable span of time in which to complete something, so it was really easy to put it off for another hour while I "woke up more" or "caught up on email".

I'm ADD, and so the "I should take a nap - ooh, a chocolate-chip cookie!" part of my brain is pretty loud and tireless. To make matters worse, a lot of my methods of procrastination is masquerading as productivity, like Charlie's taxes.

Procrastination-Methods Masquerading as Productive [PMMP...that's a horrible acronym]

Sleep in late, even when I've had plenty of sleep

Make tea or coffee.

"Research" (camels, eco-systems in tide-pools, windmills, wheelbarrows, irrigation, slate quarries) for details that amount to less than a sentence or two the text.

(From Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh)

Procrastination Methods that Ain't Even Trying [PMAET]

Sims3

Dr. Who (and other TV Shows)
Facebook (the whole thing)
Stumble Upon
Watching DIY Videos...without the whole DI part.

Charlie explained the biological reason we procrastinate, which actually helped me to understand something about the relationship between work and satisfaction when you're writing a novel. The satisfaction of completing a novel or a novel revision is enormous, but there's a ton of work that goes into reaching that one big goal. If we as writers allow ourselves to think only of the satisfaction (or validation) we will feel when the entire thing is finished, the limbic system is going to win out pretty easily with "Hey, don't you want to go feed your virtual cows?"

I suppose this is why some writers set daily word-goals - to make the satisfaction more immediate. Unfortunately, that usually caused me to stop writing once I reached that word-count, no matter where I was in the scene, so the satisfaction wasn't as high as when I completed a scene. The satisfaction of finishing a scene is enough to drive me past the point of procrastination. Of course, I may reward myself with an episode or two of Dr. Who before I move on...but that's a "natural break" in my productivity.

Because I'm ADD, removing distractions rarely works for me, since I'll just make new ones of my own. One brilliant thing about having a deficit of attention is that you can always find something new to do. If I'm at home, I tend to choose whatever will provide me with the most satisfaction at that moment. Sometimes that's writing, sometimes it's cooking or watching Veronica Mars or making throw-pillows for my new apartment or looking for pictures of steampunk wedding cakes, even though I don't even have a boyfriend...

Which is why I tend not to write at home. Certain rooms are primed for certain kinds of behavior, and when I'm in those rooms, I have a harder time resisting Neil Patrick Harris's dulcet tones.

If I'm in public, surrounded by people, I'm less likely to let myself get distracted because I know that people could be watching. I don't usually think they are, but they could be, which gives me a pretty good reason not to sit in Starbucks with my headphones in, squealing over Bradley James in full-plate armor.

What are your favorite ways to procrastinate? How can you make writing more satisfying in short-term ways? What other methods have you found to beat distraction?

Magical Motivation

It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of the Magical Words blog. I've been following them since last winter, ever since I decided to get "serious" about my own blogging. Their blog posts (and comments, and responses to comments) provide an endless source of "aha!" moments and motivation for me. I was even lucky enough to meet a number of them at StellarCon this year, and the lovely (and awesomely bedecked in cool jewelry) Faith Hunter shuffled a copy of their book Magical Words: A Writer's Companion into my hand for review.

Wait, what? You don't know Magical Words? Well, then allow me to introduce the main characters of this blog post:

(click for exposition)

Edmund Schubert

David B Coe (aka D.B. Jackson)

AJ Hartley

Misty Massey

Stuart Jaffe

Faith Hunter (aka a lot of things)

C.E. Murphy

It's been a few hectic months of earthquakes, tornadoes, and moving house since I got the book at StellarCon, but eking out time to read it has not proved difficult. First of all, this book comes endorsed by Orson Scott Card himself, and you can just about hear the man's sigh of relief in the printed words - he's not alone in trying to teach the sea of would-be genre authors how to write!

With Edmund Schubert's forward about "price tags" in fiction and AJ Hartley's essay on High Concept leading off the pack, I knew within a few pages that I was going to need highlighters. Yes, it's a signed book. I even got a super-special copy with the title page printed upside-down (the only one!), which we deemed the "collecter's copy", and I'm pretty sure the smudge on the top is relic of one of Misty Massey's chocolate-chip cookies. And I highlighted it!?


Hell yes, I did.

Books about writing are plentiful. Writing advice - good or bad - is easy to find, and part of what makes this book so valuable to me is that Magical Words offers advice for writing genre fiction. That isn't to say every essay has to do with creating magic systems, effectively using genre tropes, and whether the Kessel run should take the Falcon eight or nine parsecs--far from it. Most of the essays deal with skills, techniques, and problems faced by writers of all genres: character creation, motivation, and development; world-building at all depths and levels; and all manner of best-practices applicable to writing fiction that doesn't suck. Especially the bits about it being okay to suck before you're any good.

What sets Magical Words apart from other books on writing, however, is the fact that nearly every essay goes back to practical application in genre fiction. From the worlds of Jane Yellowrock, Mad Kestrel, the Blood of the Southlands trilogy, and many others, the authors of Magical Words show us how they applied the lessons to their own fiction, or how they struggled to make the discoveries they now share. Everything goes back to applying writing techniques to genre fiction. Unlike the college writing professors who sneer at the mention of magic, or the more literary books on writing that simply don't mention other genres exist, Magical Words dives joyfully into the way these tools of the craft apply to speculative fiction, and how we can harness them like dark wizards harness the power of the innocents, bending them to our will to make greater the worlds over which we reign.

MWAHAHAhahahaa...ha...no? Fine. Bad analogy. I guess I'll have to go back and reread the essay on metaphors and similes.

Another bit about this book that I think is really great is that a good number of the comments from the original posts were lifted from the blog and printed after the essay as a sort of dialog. The discussions that arise in the comments are part of what makes the blog itself valuable, especially when one of the other authors expands, disagrees, or provides an alternate perspective on the topic. In the book, it does double duty by reinforcing the oft-cited claim: "there is no one right way". It also provides us aspiring writers a peek at the way we should be analyzing other writers' advice, which is an important skill as there is a lot of advice out there and a lot of it is conflicting.

Another benefits of reading about writing, for me anyway, is that it always inspires me to write. Something about those little "aha!" moments gives me the motivation to get over whatever hurdle I've set in my own way. The other day I was worrying about HELLHOUND and how I could make the tension more apparent, and a well-timed post on MW set me to thinking about Helena's desires, and whether any of them conflict with each other. Aha! There's that little missing screw that was holding up the entire machine. My main character's own conflicting desires should work directly against whatever is happening. If there's magic, the tension should come from her desire to escape that life and find her own humanity. If she's hanging out with her roommates, the tension should come from her desire to protect her pack and her friends, which she must do by learning the magic that makes her not belong. Those desires conflict with each other rather directly.

If you scroll back through my blog, you'll see a lot of my posts start with "So I was reading the Magical Words blog today, and..." There's a reason for that, my friends.

I encourage you to check out the Magical Words blog and add to the comments. I've never had a comment go unanswered, and part of what makes me love these guys is the fact that they give so much of their time to the readers of the blog. Now, you could sift through the years of posts and comments to find all the posts in the book, but I encourage you to buy the book. Highlight it. These guys write this blog pro bono, and a look at any one of these posts will show you how much work they put into bringing the wisdom-of-the-published to aspiring genre fiction writers like you and me.

Kids, this book is only $6 on Kindle. Shoo! Go! Purchase! You won't be sorry!

For a little taste of what the MW crew is like, check out this interview with Kalayna Price (the chick on the far right, who is often a guest-contributor to MW, and whose wardrobe rocks my face off), recorded last weekend at ConCarolinas! Yeah, I was moving that weekend, but I was there in spirit. Possibly the spirit of Edmund's shirt...

Other frequent guest contributors to the MW blog:

Carrie Ryan

Diana Pharaoh-Frances

Lucienne Diver
Mindy Klasky

INTERACT: Are you a MW reader? What blogs or books on writing have you found helpful? Does reading about writing inspire you to write? What inspires your "aha!" moments? Have you ever networked at a convention?

Limits

Short-ish post today. I'm thinking of posting a YouTube video I find relevant every Friday, but I don't know if it's going to be a thing. It might be a thing. We'll see. /Wheezy

In the past few weeks, there have been a few really inspiring vlogs from a couple of the YouTubers I follow. While not directly about writing, I feel that the videos apply to the lifestyle of any creative type. Today, I'd like to share a video about "limits", by one of my top three vloggers, Wheezy Waiter.

Personally, I have a lot of trouble with short fiction. The limit is so strict that I'm barely capable of spinning out something interesting. Twabbles, drabbles, micro-fiction, flash-fiction, short stories - no matter what I shoot for, I tend to end up with too much for one, too little for the other. That's probably why I lean towards writing novels and novellas, but even those have limitations.

 In the world of fiction today, word-count is a huge limiting factor for a book. When I tried to pitch THE MARK OF FLIGHT the first time, the agent told me "the writing is nice, but the story is too long and slow". 130,000 words was clearly past the limit. Of course, insanely-long epic fantasy exists, but it will be hard to publish unless you're A) already an established author B) a celebrity or C) able to write like Tad Williams. On the other end of the spectrum, an adult fantasy novel that's only 70,000 words long is going to have a hard time finding a home unless it can be bulked up without sacrificing the story.

In what other ways do limits affect your writing? What do you think of the limits imposed by the current industry? Do you think limits impede art or improve it? Or both?

Also, go follow Craig on his YouTube channel: wheezywaiter

Pending Punishments and Goals for June

Just here to let you guys know that I have failed to complete the goals I set out for myself this month as well.

Now, I think I have some pretty good excuses for failing to meet them, but I'm not going to use those as a reason to get out of a punishment. My goals were thus:

1. Finish writing the new scene for "The Mark of Flight"   (90%)
2. Finish the first two lessons of "How to Revise Your Novel" with HELLHOUND  (60%)
3. Write at least three more blog-posts (100%)
4. Successfully move into new apartment (100%)--well, insofar as I now have a key and some boxes. I can't technically "move in" until the first anyway.

Also, the Twilight Punishment video is in the process of being edited. Yes, I completed the punishment, and it was painful, but not quite as painful as anticipated (team Jacob!). I actually ended up watching the Riff-Trax version of the third one with a friend while working on costumes for Animazement. I hated Windows Live Movie Maker so much I downloaded the far superior Windows Movie Maker of old to do all my editing. I'm going to make the completion of that video one of my goals for June.

SO THE PUNISHMENT.

I must do a cover of Rebecca Black's  Friday, complete with crappy music-video and choreography. I will probably need to recruit a few brave individuals to be my "homies". Corinna has generously offered to be my rapper, and Rachel will be her video-ho, so I'm looking forward to that.

OKAY, so my goals for June are as follows:

1. Finish at least 3 lessons of "How to Revise Your Novel" with HELLHOUND.
2. Write at least one blog post per week.
3. Attend two writing club meetings
4. Write at least ONE Flash Friday

I'm currently taking suggestions for punishments, so if you have any ideas, write them in the comments!


*Edit:


I just found this online. My suggestion for myself is that I have to do this makeup, including the mustache, and go somewhere public for one hour, and work on one of my failed goals. Vote on your favorite of the suggestions in the comments, or vote for the Old Age 
Makeup.

Scribe's Average Work-Day

My cat runs my life.

Scribe’s Average Work Day

7:30 - Wake up to cat massaging face to life with claws.

8:00 – Zombie-crawl out of bed. Trip over cat on way to dresser.

8:03 - Convince self pajama pants are not, in fact, business-casual.

8:10 – Say prayer of thanks for grandmothers who give coffee-pots with timers. Get: coffee, food, leg shredded by cat.

7:12 – Feed cat.

8:30 – Leave house (attempt #1). Inevitably forget something. Usually coffee. Or shoes. Surprising fact: slippers are ALSO not business-casual).

8:35 - Leave house (attempt #2). Usually go anyway.

8:40 – Drive to work. Have iPhone clipped to sun visor, set on voice-memo. If inspiration strikes, RECORD AWKWARD MEMO.

9:30 – Arrive at work. Inevitably leave something in the car (usually coffee or phone…or shoes…)

Now, it would be terrible of me to say that I sometimes glance down at my phone to check twitter or facebook, but I think that’s just something that most social-media savvy workplaces come to accept. Rather than taking a smoke-break or filing my nails, I stop by the “Internet Water-Cooler” and take a few swallows. The important point is this: I try never to let it interfere with my productivity.Try.

1:00 – Lunch.

Lunch is a key time. I pack my lunch so that I can surreptitiously eat it before my lunch hour, and then I whiz off to Starbucks from noon to 1:00 and write, outline, read, or catch up on blogs. Sometimes I’ve had a thought brewing since the car-ride that morning that I can’t wait to get down on paper. I have to brainstorm in a visual/tangible format, because I don’t do well just brainstorming in my ...brain. #inkstorm #ADD

5:30 - FREEDOM.

6:35 - Arrive home.

6:36 - Feed cat.

Once I get off work, time flows in a weird way. My first priority is usually food for myself and my cat. After that, it depends on the day. If I'm going to the gym, I don't start writing until I get home, because I'm one of those people who doesn't like interruptions. In any given workweek, there are about thirteen possible hours (more if I sacrifice sleep) when I could be writing or revising. Of course, a lot of these are used up in bathing, decompressing, blog-writing, or things that don't actually require much brain-power, like watching vlogs on youtube (I recommend vlogbrothers, charlieissocoollike, mikakitty, wheezywaiter, and rhettandlink (NC represent!).

The manuscript - I haz stolen it.

On a slow week, I might spend five of those actually writing or revising. On a good week, I'll spend five hours in one NIGHT revising or writing. It all comes down to stress-level, energy level, and amount of sleep. Also, my cat has a large amount of control over my writing. He decides when it's no longer time to write, or when I need to take a break.

Honestly, if I'm on a roll, my cat is the one who reminds me it's time to get up and take care of that nagging call of nature. I like to imagine him in a coal gray suit, and reminding me in true Kazuo Ishiguro fashion, "Miss Harris, I believe you might be more comfortable with an empty bladder." More likely, he's wearing sparkly black skinny jeans and too much hair-gel, snapping his fingers and saying: "Bitch, drag that string across the ground before I cut you."

Scribe's Subconscious

Either way. I don't mean to be masochistic when I write, but sometimes I feel like a SIM, and my story turns off the "free will" controls. I imagine there's a subconscious SIMS2 version of me doing the pee-pee dance in the back of my brain. You KNOW you know what I'm talking about.


Do you have a writing schedule? Do you get carried away when you write and revise? Is writing a priority for you, or do you let other distractions get in the way? Free will on or off?